"A Reliable Wife" by Robert Goolrick

I cannot say whether I have ever read a book more cloaked in stealth - outside of a well-structured mystery of course - where entering in to the setting of page one is nearly as undefined as each  advancing new day to greet a soul with the rising of every sun.

What I mean is this: the brunt of most stories provide enough information as to offer a plot with essential character, or a general theme, in the standard effort to draw readers.  When the author's name isn't the main draw, the story presents itself in such a way as to draw intrigue.  If that fails, a series of characters that separate themselves from the routine of the masses might manage it.  If not, there is always a posed theme, an idea that author wishes to explore through a fictional setting.

Regardless of how an author goes about the task of drawing the attention of  a reader, in any fashion the reader curries some resemblance of an idea for where the story is heading.  How the author is going to get him there is generally why the book is entertaining.

With 'A Reliable Wife', a book that drew my attention, not via the author's name (Robert Goolrick's name is placed subtly beneath the title to this work) but rather with the intrigue of the premise...

A wealthy older man (his age is never given, but I presupposed it as being in the mid-to-late 50's) is alone.  He has a housekeeper to tend to his immediate needs and her husband to tend the grounds of his estate, but he has no wife to satisfy his needs for companionship, no family to provide substance to his life.  Thus, he does what many men of that period of time (turn of the 19th century Wisconsin - if memory serves), he advertises for a wife in the newspapers.

Catherine Land answers.  She travels by train to meet and marry him.

However, there is a hidden subtext behind each person's motives.  Neither is being completely upfront with the purposes of this marriage arrangement.  And Goolrick's means of telling the story is intriguing.  He assumes the position of Catherine Land at times, offering inner dialogue to her thoughts and feelings, while doing the same with the man - whose name escapes me at the moment.

There is a third-person narration that mixes with the first-person personal narrative of the major characters.  My assessment, after reading the entire book, is it was worth the time it took to read it, but I would surprise myself considerably if I knew how to explain just what the story relayed.  There was a general theme of exploring the differing incarnations of 'love'.  The man, in his youth, wasted his days on sensual pursuits; Catherine, in her own way, followed something of the same life.  Now these two individuals are thrust together by events, learning what 'love' is - something Goolrick never explicitly states, but rather allows the reader to discover along with the characters themselves.